The Times - UK (2020-08-03)

the times | Monday August 3 2020 1GM 27

Leading articles

ests. Ministers also want to make it easier to turn

disused commercial space, which is getting more

plentiful during the pandemic, into residential

homes. That is no bad thing, though the govern-

ment should watch that it does not make old office

space a hospitable environment for cowboy devel-

opers seeking to create the maximum number of

small flats with little or no access to natural light.

In some ways the reforms do not go far enough.

The government is determined to protect the

green belt, which accounts for about 12 per cent of

land in England. This has been a sacred cow,

particularly in the Conservative Party, for far too

long. Plenty of building could take place on this

land with no threat to the countryside or to rural

conservation. That would mean more homes, and

the government should have the political courage

to recognise that, despite the hang-ups of many

voters in the Tories’ heartlands.

The government also needs to look with as

much zeal at the role of developers as that of local

authorities. According to research by the Local

Government Association, there are outstanding

permissions for over a million homes that are not

being built, in many cases because developers sit

on the land waiting for it to rise in value. Disincen-

tives to land banking of that kind are needed. The

government will be judged at the ballot box by

what it delivers. There are two political impera-

tives behind its determination to “build, build,

build”. The first is to reanimate Boris Johnson’s

administration with the spirit of his election

victory. The prime minister’s promises to “level

up” the country, and in particular to reward

northern voters who leant their support to the

Conservatives last year with a flurry of infrastruc-

ture investment, have been drowned out in recent

months by the demands of the pandemic.

The second imperative is to solve the Tories’

youth problem. Age remains the biggest dividing

line in British politics. In the 2019 election, for

every 10 years older a voter was, their likelihood of

voting Tory increased by 9 points. Only 21 per cent

of 18-24-year-olds voted Conservative; some

67 per cent of the over-70s did. While young

people find it near impossible to get on to the

housing ladder, that is unlikely to change. That

means the government needs to tackle affordabili-

ty as well as supply. The ratio of house prices to

average earnings is nearly 8 to 1, and more than

12 to 1 in London. The Conservatives are, una-

shamedly, the party of property. If a generation

grows up without it, they could keep the Tories out

of government for a long time in years to come.

with their parents unable to take time off to teach

them and their schools, in too many cases, making

scant effort to do so. The divide between public

and private sectors is stark. Private school pupils

have been five times more likely to get near full-

time teaching online than their state school peers.

The psychological impact is serious, too. Sur-

veys of parents show an increase in children’s

emotional and behavioural difficulties. Children

are more restless and finding it difficult to pay at-

tention. No wonder, when they have been unable

to see their friends, deprived of purposeful activity

and jostling for adult attention with parents’ col-

leagues on the end of a Zoom call. Those parents

have also suffered. Many have found it harder to

go back to work while teaching and caring for a

child. Women have borne the brunt of the extra

responsibility. A report by researchers at UCL

found that women have spent more than twice as

much time as men on their children’s home

schooling during lockdown, with the result that

many mothers have put their careers on hold.

For all those reasons, reopening schools at the

beginning of the academic year cannot just be an

aspiration. It has to be non-negotiable, including

with the unions. Chris Whitty, the chief medical

officer for England, warned last week that the

government may face “trade-offs” to allow pupils

to return to school, possibly having to close pubs or

other high-transmission environments in order to

get children back into the classroom.

It is to be hoped that rigorous safety measures,

from masks in businesses and frequent handwash-

ing to social distancing and regular testing, can

open up a path around those trade-offs. If not,

then the foundational role of schools in society

and the economy means that they have to come

first. The government is not blind to the health

risks, but the evidence on reopening is encourag-

ing. According to Mark Woolhouse, an epidemio-

logist on the government’s Sage committee, there

has been no recorded case of a teacher catching

the coronavirus from a pupil anywhere in the

world. The evidence suggests that children are less

susceptible to the virus, very unlikely to suffer

badly if they do get it, and unlikely to pass it on. Mr

Williamson may have a fight on his hands this

summer. He needs to be ready for it.

homes for the super-rich. Two of the Palmerston

forts, Spitbank and No Man’s, are now on the

market as luxury properties for about £4 million

each. Horse Sand, a third fort which is derelict, is

going for the bargain price of £750,000.

Thanks to some tinkering with the design, the

forts may not be quite so useful for fighting off the

French as once they could have been. Gun stations

and lighthouses have been converted into apart-

ments and luxury suites. Yet they have their ad-

vantages. Mike Clare, who is selling the forts, as-

sures prospective buyers that “you feel very secure

when you are out there, a bit like a Bond villain”.

In truth, what multi-millionaire has not dreamt

of owning a fortified lair in the Solent from which

they can plot world domination and scupper the

best laid plans of Her Majesty’s Secret Service? On

the bigger of the forts, at least, there should be

ample space for a shark tank or two, a command

centre decked out with nondescript levers and red

buttons, and perhaps a monorail for easy trans-

port between nefarious laboratories, planet-bust-

ing lasers, and spa baths for some recuperation

after a hard day’s villainy. Owners would be safe

from noisy neighbours, too. With a bit of work, the

forts could be worth Palmerston’s investment yet.

Plan to Build

Solving the housing crisis is an electoral necessity for the Conservatives.

Planning reforms announced by the government are a welcome first step

The planning system in this country, designed in

the wake of the Second World War, is showing its

age. It is a command-and-control system for land

use dreamt up for an era of post-war reconstruc-

tion, which now hampers the market. Proposed

developments are too often gummed up in

disputes between builders, local councils and

campaigners, which reward lawyers and lobbyists

above all. That is one reason that Britain lags

behind countries such as France and Germany in

housebuilding. The government is right to tackle

the problem with planning reforms announced by

Robert Jenrick, the housing secretary.

The essence of the reform plan is a move away

from case-by-case planning decisions by councils

to a more predictable “zonal” system. Land will be

divided into three categories: for protection, for

growth, and for renewal. Permission for develop-

ments of homes, shops and offices on land desig-

nated for growth will be granted automatically. In

renewal areas, permission will be granted “in

principle” while officials carry out checks.

The point of the reforms is not to make develop-

ments more likely to get permission (80-90 per

cent of planning applications are approved by

councils already) but to make the process faster,

cheaper and less prone to capture by special inter-

Back to School

Teaching unions cannot be allowed to stop children returning to class in September

It will not have come as a great surprise to the

government when Britain’s biggest teaching union

told ministers to “review and, if necessary, adjust”

plans to reopen schools in the light of new lock-

down measures. Throughout the pandemic,

teaching unions have resisted efforts to get their

members back into the classroom. Gavin William-

son, the education secretary, can expect a steady

drumbeat of warnings from those unions, from

now until the start of the academic year. He should

not march to it.

The harms of closing schools have been too

many to count. The most obvious is to children’s

education. Four in ten pupils in England were not

in regular contact with their teachers, according to

a study published last week, and one in five did less

than an hour of schoolwork a day after lockdown

was imposed. Unless ministers move fast to plug

the gaps in children’s learning, they will carry the

intellectual scarring of the pandemic with them

for years, into their exams, their university appli-

cations and their working lives.

This is awful for social inequality. Disadvan-

taged children have suffered disproportionately,

Hold the Fort

Aspiring Bond villains seeking evil lairs need look no further than the Solent

When Lord Palmerston proposed to erect several

forts off the south coast in the 1860s, his colleagues

were not impressed. In a speech to the House of

Commons, John Bright MP, a Liberal, dismissed

the case for the forts as “incoherent, illogical and

absurd”, warning of economic ruin, and even

revolution, if the government were to spend

millions on the new defences.

Little did he know what uses were to be found

for these structures some 160 years later. The

Solent forts may not have been needed to repel a

Napoleonic invasion, as Lord Palmerston argued,

but it turns out that they make for jolly nice second

UK: First day of the Eat Out to Help Out
scheme to support the hospitality industry;
pubs, restaurants, auction houses and bingo
halls reopen in Wales; HSBC interim results.

The dark bush
cricket has become
widespread in
southern and
central England. Its
range, like that of
other Orthoptera,
has increased markedly since the late 1980s
as warmer temperatures, driven by climate
change, have boosted breeding success and
favoured the survival of their eggs. In
summer and autumn its regular chirps can
be heard most clearly at dusk and after dark
from hedgerows and gardens, where it is
often attracted by the lights of houses to
sing under windows. Brown and flightless,
with long antennae, the male stridulates by
rubbing his short wings together to produce
two kinds of call: one to attract females, the
other to warn off rivals. melissa harrison

In 1936 Jesse Owens, the American track
and field athlete, won the first of his four
gold medals at the Berlin Olympic Games.

Jack Straw, pictured,
Labour MP (1979-2015),
lord chancellor and
justice secretary
(2007-10), 74. Ossie
Ardiles, footballer,
Argentina (1975-82) and
Tottenham Hotspur
(1978-88), and manager, 68; Prof Michael
Arthur, provost and president, University
College London, 66; Robert Ayling, chief
executive, British Airways (1996-2000), 74;
Vice-Admiral Paul Bennett, chief of staff,
Nato Allied Command Transformation, 56;
Tony Bennett, singer, I Left My Heart in San
Francisco (1962), 94; Steven Berkoff, actor,
Octopussy (1983), The Girl with the Dragon
Tattoo (2011), 83; Tom Brady, American
football quarterback, six-time Super Bowl
champion, 43; Jourdan Dunn, supermodel
and actress, Terminal (2018), 30; Sir Roger
Gifford, banker, lord mayor of London
(2012-13), 65; Stephen Graham, actor, The
Virtues (2019), 47; Sir Nick Harvey, Lib Dem
MP (1992-2015), party chief executive
(2017-19), armed forces minister (2010-12),
59; James Hetfield, musician, co-founder of
heavy metal band Metallica, 57; Lindsey
Hilsum, international editor, Channel 4
News, and writer, In Extremis: The Life and
Death of the War Correspondent Marie Colvin
(2018), 62; Sir David Holgate, High Court
judge, president, Upper Tribunal (Lands
Chamber, 2016-19), 64; Sir Simon
Keenlyside, baritone, 61; John Landis, film
director, The Blues Brothers (1980), 70; Ryan
Lochte, swimmer, six-time Olympic gold
medallist, 36; Steve Murrells, chief
executive, Co-operative Group, 55; Mark
Ormerod, chief executive, UK Supreme
Court, 63; Edward Petherbridge, actor,
portrayed Lord Peter Wimsey in TV
adaptations of the novels of Dorothy
L Sayers, 84; Lord (Alexander) Philip,
senator of the College of Justice in Scotland
(1996-2007), 78; Martin Sheen, actor,
Apocalypse Now (1979), The West Wing
(1999-2006), 80; Skin (Deborah Dyer),
singer, Skunk Anansie, 53; Martha Stewart,
talk show host and businesswoman, 79.

“It is sound planning that invariably earns us
the outcome we want; without it, even the
gods are unlikely to look with favour on our
designs.” Herodotus, Greek historian, The
Histories (c 484BC-425BC)

Nature notes

Birthdays today

On this day

The last word

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